Former Premier defender Lee Dixon thinks that West Ham United have benefitted from the fact there have been no fans in the stadium for the majority of the season.
To say that West Ham United fans have a strained relationship with the hierarchy at the club might be something of an understatement, and that feeling was initially shared with head coach David Moyes following his re-appointment in 2019.
Now though, with West Ham in the conversation for a European spot this season, the attitude seems to have shifted towards the other end of the scale. And as heard on the BBC 5 Live Football Daily podcast, Dixon thinks that it all started by there being no fans in the ground to put pressure on the team to begin with.
He said: “I said before the game about no fans being in here at the moment because he’s been able to just get on with the job. He was like that when he was at Everton, he kind of got on with his job; he coached, he recruited well.
“Coming here, under a little bit of pressure, the fans wanting to play a certain way and get results at the same time, they’re quite an impatient bunch here.
“I think we’ve seen that in the past, from a support point of view, and I think he’s recruited really, really well. And I think that’s the important thing.”
Will West Ham United finish in a European spot?
Yes
No
TIF Thoughts on Lee Dixon’s comments about David Moyes and West Ham United fans…
It’s been well discussed how big the impact of having no fans has been to football clubs this season, but as Dixon points out, West Ham seem to be one of the few clubs that have managed to take this season and turn it into a positive rather than a negative.
Now obviously there are some other factors in there as well, if you look at the table you can see the likes of Spurs, Arsenal and Liverpool all lower than where they were expected to be at the end of the season.
But West Ham have just been the team to have taken the most advantage of that. And if they can keep up the form this season, and give fans nothing to complain about when they are allowed back into grounds, then who knows where they might end up going?